Excerpt from Vanishing World by Sayaka Murata, Ginny Tapley Takemori, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Excerpt
Vanishing World

As I grew into adulthood I continued to fall in love with both real and nonreal people.

When I was old enough, I wanted to leave home as soon as possible, but it was hard to make a living without a proper job, and my mother didn't seem in any hurry for me to leave. I finally managed to leave home after I finished college and found a job.

I was hired by a company that supplied construction materials, like onsite scaffolding, working in their office in an old building in Nihonbashi, central Tokyo. Once I'd got used to the work, I started wanting to have a baby, and so at age twenty-five I married a man I met at a matchmaking party.

However, our relationship didn't last long, and we soon got divorced.

We had taken both our jobs into consideration and planned for me to be artificially inseminated on my twenty-eighth birthday. He was properly set up with a long-term lover, and our respective lovers both came to congratulate us at our wedding ceremony.

He had always liked to stroke my head. We both liked movies, so we often watched them together. He was in the habit of stroking my head while watching them, as though petting a dog, nothing untoward about it. But then one day this action suddenly became sexual. I noticed his hand beginning to move differently than usual and thought it must just be my imagination, but then he abruptly started fondling my bottom and breasts. As I struggled to my feet, his erect penis touched my knee.

I was horrified. I'd never imagined that a member of my own family would have an erection because of me. I tried to scream, but he covered my mouth with his. I felt my tongue being licked all over, and nausea welled up within me. I vomited into his mouth, and as he recoiled I pushed him away and ran into the toilet, where I threw up again and again.

I went straight to the police. They were shocked when I told them that I'd been sexually assaulted by my husband, and sheltered me. They said I had better not go back home until things had settled down, so I took refuge at Juri's for a while, since I thought my mother would probably take my husband's side. Juri told me I should press charges against him, but I didn't even want to see his face again, so I didn't go that far. I looked for a cheap studio apartment and took some time off work during the week to collect my belongings from the home we had shared. That was how I started living alone.

When we divorced, our respective families got together to discuss what had happened.

His parents gave him a good grilling as he sat hanging his head. "That's the sort of thing people only do outside the home. I can't believe you tried to have sex with your wife!"

My mother, meanwhile, was strangely calm. "Well, these things can happen."

After the divorce had gone through, I didn't really feel like falling in love again. My lovers from the other world, who had been with me since childhood, were the ones who consoled me for having been soiled.

Their existence purified me. I felt so grossed out that I couldn't imagine being with a real person ever again.

I thought I'd stay living with them like that in my germfree room, but my vague longing to have a child didn't go away.

I didn't think it was possible financially to raise a child alone. When I told Juri that I was going to give up on the idea, she told me sharply, "You have to do the things in life that you want. Don't worry, perverts wanting to commit incest with their wife are very rare. Just look around and see who you find. You don't have to make up your mind right away, do you?"

Feeling persuaded, I went to another matchmaking party. I was thirty-one years old.

"You already failed once. Why bother again?" my other friends said, but Juri's sharp words had given me confidence.

I went to the party with a friend who was also looking for a partner, and that's where I met my current husband.

From Vanishing World © 2015 by Sayaka Murata. English translation © 2025 by Ginny Tapley Takemori. Reprinted with the permission of the publisher, Grove Press, an imprint of Grove Atlantic, Inc. All rights reserved.